


Spillway

by Scubapus



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Undead, Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 21:38:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13085883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scubapus/pseuds/Scubapus
Summary: Spill·way. noun. A natural drainage channel cut by water from melting glaciers or ice fields.





	Spillway

**Author's Note:**

> HUNK isn’t the most common muse. Everything I write about him is based off a private story. Sure, it would make sense if the audience here was totally informed of his intentions since his mention in Code Veronica…but as mysterious as he is, it’s most fitting to only catch glimpses of him. 
> 
> For those of you who may think that some elements of this aren’t very HUNK of him, consider how experience can change any man.
> 
> Have any thoughts? Let me know. I’m always looking for fellow authors and fans to share ideas with.

A narrow hallway, constructed of cement. Within it, the sound of a single 9-millimeter round. One sharp bang, reverberating long after the spent shell clattered to the dank, impervious floor.

Within HUNK’s grip, the kick of recoil ceased as abruptly as it had occurred. His adept hand spared his wrist, sealed within his glove, absorbing the force as it had countless times before. The Heckler & Koch VP70 was but an extension of him.

An instrument of Death.

Gleaming quietly in the sparse light, crimson lenses reflected the tattered body of his target. Bloodied lips, once contorted in a rotten snarl, had parted into twitching spasms wrought by his bullet. Jellied gray matter dribbled down pallor, chasing ribbons of red, tracing nostril to follow the fissures of blackened, shattered teeth. 

To him, the sight was nothing new. Just an element of the same old situation he had encountered again and again. That the man had festered with infection and stumbled toward him with a taste for flesh was nothing out of the ordinary. For someone else, it might have been. For him, the sight was inevitable with how he made his living.

Another day, another dollar - if he could identify a certain body. That was what his objective was, after all. 

As a soldier, he didn't ask questions - a rule he had abided since a lifetime ago.

To the sound of his boot steps, the carrier slumped. The shift of fabric separating from blood saturated flesh was moist, settling to stillness. From its gaping mouth, distorted by death and remnants of ingested flesh, a soulless rasp, created as the creature’s own weight forcibly expelled the breath from its chest.

With the tip of his scuffed boot, HUNK sought viscera-stained lab coat and dug underneath the corpse, searching for purchase. Upon finding it, he unceremoniously rolled over the body to send gray-glazed eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

From the far end of the corridor, fists began to beat, the percussion of their pounding muted by the reinforced door. Such a security measure was effective, provided one didn't allow a breach of containment...but that, upon his reading of the name printed on that blood-smattered ID, was the soldier's exact intention.

Not his man - or what remained of him. The identity specified on his mission dossier could never have been mistaken for the oriental origin he was confronted with. 

Cordura-clad shoulders sagged imperceptibly. Had it not been for the slack that transmitted through shoulder pads to the webbing incorporated into his utility vest, the shift in his posture might have gone missed.

For a man of his skill and reputation, the mission was menial. Could have been considered degrading for a soldier with his prestige...but he was not one to judge. He accepted his obligations with the adherence expected of his profession. 

He was a soldier of fortune. If those who sought his services could produce the necessary funds, he accomplished their assignments. 

For as many aches were embedded in his bones and scars incorporated into his cartilage, he had no intentions of retiring. He was incapable of slowing, for that matter, despite the physical exhaustion carved into his body.

He would rest when his mortality got the better of him, he had decided forever ago. Until then, there was none for the wicked.

The Death did not die. That truth persisted despite the odds that were perpetually stacked against him. 

In his ear, a technological crackle as a voice transmitted. He wasn't of the state of mind to question how his equipment could still have such faults in this day and age. Advancements had been made, but still...

The interruption was expected, the speaker sounding disinterested.

"Is it him?" 

"Negative," he responded. That was all that needed to be said. 

"Carry on then," the man supplied before the static ended.

A superfluous statement, as it was understood that extraction did not arrive unless the objective was completed. Given these circumstances, there was no more seasoned veteran than him.

Holstering his firearm, his clip half expended and another round ready in the chamber, the mask figure adjusted his stance and rejected the age attempting to hinder him. He flexed leather-encased digits, anticipating the aching of joints and moist popping of sinew. 

The process of scouring the facility would continue. Already, he had left a trail of bodies littered behind him. His resources were capable - he had conserved ammunition until recently, severing the necks of the infected when possible. He had come equipped with plenty, for a man of his abilities, having adjusted his supplies to suit the typical headcount of the staff listed on the ledger. He had anticipated encountering a number of mutations and experimental specimens but had not yet had the pleasure.

Hours had passed since he has first set down and began the process of methodically scouring the facility for the chosen few his employer had targeted. All, in one way or another, were to be held accountable for what had befallen the location. They were to be tracked down and have their deaths confirmed. Only one remained, one of three suspected of having sold information to a competing organization.

Biological engineering hadn't ended with Umbrella. That much had been made evident since his former employer had been abolished. The other players in the game hadn't so much as batted an eye when Umbrella had become a public example. Instead, they had battened down their own operations and resumed them with one less competitor. Profits motivated the benefactors as much as scientific endeavor drove their faculty, and there had been no shortage of work for soldiers like him. His specific experiences, in tandem with his reputation, ensured that prospective employers sought his services on the regular.

Polycarbonate lenses cast a red tinge over underlying eyes that surveyed the prints left by his boots. Their treads a stamp, they marked the pale floors in crimson as he continued in his mission, turning his attention instead to the door ahead. From the base of his wrist came the dull click of a spring-loaded mechanism, a fatal length of blade piercing the open air.

Casually, he approached the door sealing new territory. The thumping of erratic fists alerted him to the danger beyond. Even without forewarning, alert as he was honed to be, he was prepared. The events that unfolded, as he passed a stolen key card before its reader, were deliberate and fluid.

Clumsy and unsuspecting, the creature behind the door spilled forward as it ascended on hidden tracks. The brutal point of his blade met it in an uppercut, its aim precise. It plunged past resistance, piercing past hyoid, puncturing muscle, severing arteries, and jousting brain stem in one deft motion. 

The female carrier froze and then collapsed, her final wheezing moan splintering as he lifted a boot and thrust it into her sternum, propelling her back and violently off his blade. With its withdrawal, he heaved a kick and forced his victim aside, sending her spasming corpse careening and then colliding with the adjacent wall. Only then did copious amounts of gore begin spilling from the wound in her neck, crimson cascading down her front.

Mutely, the soldier allowed the body to collapse beyond his red field of vision. The damage he had inflicted was fatal and the threat had been dispatched. Given the female gender, the infected was clearly not his target - only another body to be discarded.

Cupping his left hand against the back of his neck, circumventing the dense protection of his vest, HUNK applied pressure while simultaneously giving it a sharp twist. To his victims, the sound of cervical vertebrae popping grotesquely would have signaled their demise. For him, it registered with relief.

While rubbing out tension, the dark figure sheathed his blade back within the concealed mechanism against his forearm. Given that it could be triggered in an instant, its exposure would only serve to be burdensome. From his vantage point, he discovered yet another series of doors embellishing an otherwise blank passageway. Nothing of particular interest existed other than more ground to be covered.

He half expected to discover his target alive and cowering, still alive yet fearing his demise. Chances were he feared the viral creatures lurching throughout the laboratory. It seemed logical that Doctor Anthony Siletz would occupy a section distant from where the specimens were stored. 

Odds were that he did not expect a mercenary to locate him. Or to even be on the hunt. As far as his dossier depicted, Siletz had no reason to anticipate that his transmission for recovery would be intercepted by anyone but his intended receiver. 

Reputation aside, there was no way in hell he would allow Siletz to reach the installation and benefit from retrieving both the deceptive scientist and the data compiled by him.

Beneath the shield of HUNK’s mask, dry lips pulled into a faint sneer. A rare sense of humanity crept into the periphery of his mind. Bitterness, as he considered that in time, a team sporting a blue mockery of the Umbrella symbol might arrive and attempt to clean up the contaminated mess left behind.

Gone were his former employer's glory days. Some remnants of the true Umbrella Corporation lingered beneath rubble and rock. He had overturned a number of the figurative slabs and assisted in ensuring the safekeeping of the survivors. Through them, some of White Umbrella lived on...assuming the manhunt for them, continuing to that day as it was, failed in locating them.

A psychologist who had intended to dissect and understand him had once reported on his loyalty to Umbrella. To that day, that deduction remained true. He still retained his convictions. However, he wasn't of some desperate or otherwise misguided notion that Umbrella would claw its way out from its swollen grave.

He was loyal to a company that was all but dead, existing as one of its very last players. The rest, in the dregs, were individuals who could be trusted to maintain their silence out of their fear of him. Even they would not mistake his dedication to Umbrella's memory with suicide.

In the past, he would have gone to hell and back for Umbrella. Now, there wasn't enough of it left to garner the sacrifice. 

While he recognized his grudge toward the new Umbrella as inexcusably human of him - fallible and uncharacteristic of him as it was - he could not prevent himself from seeing the abuse of that symbol as mockery. The reestablished corporation, made responsible for atoning for the former namesake's sins, were interfering with the business from which he had established his career and sustained his livelihood. 

Unfortunate for Blue - as it was known throughout bioterrorist circles - this laboratory would suffer a catastrophic meltdown. All the evidence on-site would be engulfed in flames. Their sell-out source of intel would be rendered into a pile of dust with not even a single tooth available for dental referencing. 

It was the least he could do. A form of revenge. A means of shitting on the outfit that had shit on the Umbrella legacy.

Casting his concealed gaze down toward the carcass crumpled in a pool of blood at his feet, the soldier's eye caught the glint of fluid smattered across his boot. Without thought, he drew it back before kicking forward, steel toe connecting with limp jaw with a wet crunch. The carrier's neck twisted with the brute force of impact, contorting to an unnatural degree. A pointless expenditure of energy, he recognized. One that didn't suit him, but with age came a decline in his tolerance for bullshit.

To ground himself, HUNK upholstered his firearm and felt its familiar weight in his accustomed hand. He turned it one way and then the other, exposing all of its surfaces to his battened gaze. Upon seeing similar splatters of viscera, he cupped the afflicted barrel of the VP70 and smoothed one gloved thumb across it in an attentive arc. In doing so, he brushed off the pistol, repeating his motions until it was visibly clean. 

For her dependable service, Matilda deserved better than to be covered in filth.

-

HUNK located Siletz in the corridor to the West wing, two rooms from the office he worked in. The doctor was accompanied by a tall woman and a male security guard.

Except his companions could no longer be considered human. The woman was hunched over, smacking bloody lips and gulping audibly as she sucked in wet breaths and grunted insatiably. Her broken teeth tore through intestinal rubber, the surfaces of it glistening with viscera. She held the length of it between both hands, brought up to her mouth with its origin unwinding from the grotesquely flayed cavity.

The security guard was her victim, navy uniform stained black with blood. The hallway would have smelled of copper and rot had HUNK not been spared his olfactory sense. One of the man's boots was unlaced. A sign of struggle. His handgun - a Sig Sauer P226 - was absent from his reach.

Instead, it was seven feet behind him, its safety still engaged. Rendered harmless, it appeared to have been lifted from the body by the figure standing hunched nearby, a duralumin case discarded near loafer-clad feet. The exposed broad surface was brightly smeared with blood.

HUNK's trained eye could read the scene like that of a witnessed crime. Based on the distances of the items and their condition, he could almost see the events unfold before him.

The guard had been the first victim to succumb to the carrier. He would have been armed yet unable to ready and discharge his firearm before the infected woman had bitten him. There was a gaping wound in his throat, jugular visibly drained in sprays across his breast pocket and beyond. Ordinarily that would have been a distraction for the carrier, enabling others to escape and yet-

Someone had approached the infected human and its victim close enough to redirect its attention. Damn close. Close enough to grab a dropped weapon. A scuff on the hard floor showed a rushed pivoting, the brunt of balanced body weight braced on a single sole in the maneuver. The condition of the pistol, safety preventing it from being fired, must have panicked the handler who had then thrown or hurriedly dropped it in his frenzy. Desperate, he had then yielded the duralumin case and utilized it as a melee weapon, striking the woman alongside her blood-slick face. 

The case had either been flung with the effort, suggesting a lack of intent and control, or had been kicked away by the carrier as she had taken down her prey. A brief struggle had ensued and the man had been killed, a broad pool of blood mapping where his torn abdomen had drained. Following situation, the woman had risen and then returned to the security guard at a later time, attracted by his intact corpse. The other man had then reanimated.

Beyond the woman gorging herself was another carrier stood and wailed mindlessly. He was hunched, his belly ripped open, entrails dangling past his knees, staining pleated khakis. For whatever reason, he remained disinterested in ingesting the remains that the woman busied herself with. 

The soldier made quick work of the closest carrier. She noticed him almost immediately, her head wobbling on her shoulders as she looked up with cataract-laden eyes. They were dolostone and just as lifeless. Dry with broken veins blistering the edges. 

HUNK took aim at her upturned face, sending a bullet through her skull. The round he expended punched a clean hole through bone, a spray of emulsified tissues and fluids bursting out from behind her. She sagged, dropping onto the corpse below her. Her meal flowed out of her mouth. It poured, in shredded pieces, back into the abdominal cavity where it belonged.

From the far end of the corridor, a wheezing moan. The sound of shuffling steps, gait uneven with a pronounced limp. There he was, lurching toward him with cannibal hunger, tendrils of entrails swaying with each footfall. Outstretched hands grasped for the soldier, spasmodic and sporadic.

The face HUNK's shielded eyes focused on resembled that on the dossier provided with his objective...minus a cheek. Flaps of detached skin hung from jawline, strands of meaty muscle exposed against glistening bone. Even had it not, hollow and flaccid with infection as it was, the lanyard and its identification tag labeled the man.

Dr. Anthony Siletz. Lead Microbiologist. Clearance level Gold. 

HUNK allowed the moaning creature to come within five feet of him before he raised Matilda and depressed her trigger. The heavy pull was familiar, ensuring proper function, and the shot followed, thunderous and furious. Siletz's right eye exploded like a grape, white and pink jelly bursting and oozing. The shot cored out the socket, leaving it gaping like a screaming mouth.

The same dying sounds left the cadaver. He fell in a similar manner as all the others - like a meat sack, striking the ground with a thud. The limbs spread beneath his dead weight, the top of his cranium collapsed within inches of the soldier's boots. Despite locating his target, HUNK's stance remained one of indifference.

His mission was completed. It had been tedious...and uneventful, though it took significantly extreme events to be considered noteworthy for a soldier of his experience. His reputation had been built on far higher stakes and threats...but this responsibility had been his all the same. Like his other missions, the conclusion of this would put bread on the table.

Another dead scientist. Another failed defector. Simple as that. Over and done with, leaving him to await his next assignment.

Red polycarbonate caught the light as he tilted his attention to the duralumin case. Upon fixing on the object of interest, he migrated over to it and knelt to inspect it. 

As expected, it was locked. He didn't have the six-digit code and didn't anticipate locating it on Siletz’s body. Still, there were other means of accessing the contents. With them in mind, uncertain whether or not they were fragile and if they were, to what extent, HUNK reached into the back compartment of his utility belt. His gloved grip retrieved a capped syringe emblazoned with a hazardous caustic symbol. Sufficient for his purposes.

Mindful of the potential contents of the case, he laid it on its blood-smeared side. Given the predictable physics of gravity, he estimated that he could disable the locking mechanism without doing damage beyond it. His intent was to minimize the exposure the remainder of the case had to his chemical means.

Deftly, he twisted off the cap and exposed the syringe contained inside. He then maneuvered the slim needle into one crevice of the dial, depressing the plunger. He mentally divided the contents of the syringe four ways, re-situating it to inject equal amounts within the mechanism of the twice divided locks. With each action, the hissing sound of destruction mounted as the acid ate away at metal.

Within moments, the noise dissipated. Only then did he stand to his full height before bracing the heavy tread of his left boot on the case. Using his weight to stabilize it, he brought the heel of the right down on the compromised lock, his momentum solid. It was enough to disable the mechanism, sparing his Kevlar gloves exposure to any remnant acid.

The spring-loaded hinge responded, popping open to reveal the interior. Within it, folders containing evidence. He opened the uppermost in the palm of one hand, using his other to flip through its pages. Charts, scientific jargon, photographic evidence of specimens... Genetic codes of infected. Records of mutations and behaviors - all thoroughly condemning. But only in the right hands.

Instead, the files were in his. Shutting the folder, the Umbrella operative rifled briefly through the other documents, determining that they were similar. Among interest was one, in particular, that was handwritten and contained the locations of other laboratories, as well as the suspected whereabouts of where they received their raw biological materials. Prison inmates from South America. Discarded fetuses collected by third parties. Illegal activities through and through.

Within the case, secured in a specific cutout, was a small vial. Within it, what appeared to be a tissue sample.

Upon further inspection, he ascertained the object inside to be the mutated limb of what appeared to be a rodent. Irregular growths rendered the appendage misshapen. Hairless as it was, remnants of shed fur clinging to the glass of the vial, the flesh exhibited a grey and waxy quality not unlike the infected scattered in the hallway.

Releasing a terse exhale, the masked operative accessed the pouch at the left of his hip, reinforced and shock absorbent. He handled the sample firmly while securing it within the protective confines, sealing the enclosure tightly.

In addition, he discarded the folders and retrieved the pages within. He creased them once, down the horizontal mid-line, before unzipping his Kevlar vest and tucking them inside. Once satisfied of their storage, he pulled the metal fixture up with gloved fingers and then ensured the holster of his sidearm. He understood that while unnecessary, the evidence of Siletz’s intent would allow his employer an understanding of precisely what information may have been provided to their competitors through electronic means.

Siletz was dead. Had suffered a worse fate. HUNK was not required to provide proof. His word was as trustworthy as a severed head. In the past, he had been known to obtain a finger or ear if requested by his commander, but there were liabilities in transporting infected flesh. Unlike other soldiers more reliant on technology, he had no intention of tethering himself to a camera and having his every motion observed.

Most soldiers were obligated. In stark contrast, his refusal was respected. With a reputation as highly regarded as his, benefactors didn't dare challenge it. In fact, many were too fearful of witnessing his methods.

This mission, however, was elementary. Anticlimactic. A downright bore. He preferred being surrounded by a city terrorized by outbreak. There simply wasn't enough chaos in contained settings. Too many factors were accounted for. Too much was predictable.

Future missions would take him to locations rampant with infection. That much was certain. With something distantly reminiscent of anticipation, he looked forward to it. He wouldn't bother looking back upon this, nor would he care to remember it.

Deliberately, he made a fist of both hands. Registered the sinew steel throughout his arms. Focused on the action, slow and powerful, until he swore he could feel each crease form in his weathered skin. Until the tension within his grip became so overwhelming that had gloves not spared him, blood would have bubbled up from his palms and spilled like ribbons to drip to the floor below. Instead, his knuckles remained as bleached as death within the protective confines.

He welcomed pain. He invited it like a trusted comrade. He willed the onset of it. He waited eagerly for it, disregarding the known fact that he would be immune to it. That it would amount to nothing and be rendered as much after all he had survived.

But it never came.

Release, when he allowed it, was cathartic.

Reaching to the side of his mask, practiced fingers located the control there and began a transmission. That was the first step to making his way back to the surface. Already, he planned to kill his way through an alternate route to the extraction point. He didn't care that he had all but secured the path he had already taken. Such violent entertainment could lessen the boring toll of waiting for the chopper.

The sooner it began, the better. The same could be said for the end.

This time, there was no static. No voice other than his own, as he spoke first. When he did, the words tasted familiar on his tongue as they always had. Bland as his tone. Final and definite. The same as always.

“Mission completed,” he communicated.

With nothing else to be said, he killed the transmission. He had no interest in a response.


End file.
